Apprentice
by Boosette
Summary: Katrina Van Tassel, aged twelve years, two months, could have said with some degree of certainty that she had never once laid eyes upon, spoken to, or otherwise made the acquaintance of a witch. Then everything changed.


November 9, 1761

Katrina Van Tassel, aged twelve years, two months, could have said with some degree of certainty that she had never once laid eyes upon, spoken to, or otherwise made the acquaintance of a witch.

That changed all at once, one cold November evening: the woman came riding, shouting her business for all to hear. That she sought her husband in Sleepy Hollow, there for some business of his own or else in Tarry-Town, waiting out the night. She could not have been a single day past four-and-twenty, although she moved and spoke with the gravity of one much older ... once they got her down from her horse and speaking any kind of sense at all.

She introduced herself at last as Mrs. Mary Oliver, wife of one John Oliver, up Beacon way. There was some confusion as to which family would play the part of host, an honor Katrina's father ultimately won, for they had the space to spare and easy access to the packed-earth road and the Hudson River, both.

In truth, standing upon her own feet with her horse in better hands than her own, Mrs. Mary Oliver bore herself with all the manners of a gentlewoman. She was quite tall for a lady, pale-complected and now red-faced with exertion, built fine of bone with gray eyes and a round, apple-cheeked face.

Lines from worry or laughter or both framed her mouth and eyes, and she twisted her marriage band perpetually around her finger, whether from nervous habit or the unfamiliarity of a new bride, Katrina could not say.

Katrina insinuated herself around the edges of their neighbors, including Mr. Van Brunt and his wife, who had roused alongside half the town that night and gathered with Katrina's father and the visitor in the Van Tassels' sitting room.

"Go back to sleep, dear heart; I'll serve," Mrs. Van Brunt said, patting her arm, when Katrina arrived with the silver tea service.

Another neighbor yawned greatly and spoke to Katrina's father, over her head, "Bless your child, Balt; God knows no daughter of mine would have herself up and afoot past midnight for —" he gestured wildly; Katrina had to wait beside him with the teapot held aloft until he stopped. " — This!"

He took his tea without milk but with sugar (and a good thing, too — they'd have no milk until someone chased down the cow, who'd got loose of her pen in the night's tumult). Katrina smiled beneath her lashes and let her father answer for her. She spoke instead to Mrs. Van Brunt.

"With no disrespect meant, Ma'am, _I_ must act as lady of this house, until and unless my father marries again."

"You have your mother's mouth, that's for certain," Mrs. Van Brunt replied with a huff, for Katrina's ears alone.

_That_ got only the politest of smiles and the offer to fetch non-existent cakes from the kitchen. Mrs. Van Brunt declined her, and Katrina moved past. Now their guest was on her right; Mrs. Oliver took no milk or sugar either, but she did thank Katrina for her cup and looked her over in the oddest way, eyes lingering on her face, and then upon her hands.

Katrina very nearly dropped the teapot, only then Mrs. Oliver's hands were a steadying presence over her own, and Katrina moved on to the next person, all the while listening in on every piece of conversation she could catch.

It seemed a number of the Olivers' outbuildings had caught fire, and of course she must locate her husband _at once_, and it took all the women gathered and most of their husbands to convince her to wait until morning to mount a proper search.

The story felt flimsy as crepe, with no visible column of smoke in any direction this past afternoon, but Katrina kept her opinion to herself and, once all were served, lingered in the back of the room with a lukewarm cup cradled between her hands.

November 10, 1761

The standing clock chimed the second hour of the morning before they had shooed no too few of their neighbors back out to their own homes and begun to settle in again for the night.

Katrina knocked upon her own bedroom door, and gave the very slightest pause before entering. Hers being the only room in the house even partially suitable for guests at this time of year and this time of night, she had moved to a pallet by the kitchen hearth. By midday tomorrow a room would have been aired out, the bed tightened up, mattress stuffed with fresh sweet straw, dusted... dressed...

For now her own pitcher had been filled with hot water, though they had not brought up the hip-bath. Katrina herself arrived with an armful of homespun cloth, nightclothes her mother had left behind years ago, and which her father could not bring himself to remove them from the wardrobe in their bedroom until now. They smelled of dust and age, not like her mother had at all.

Mother's face in her mind's eye was the miniature Father carried in his waistcoat, not the woman who had sat with her through cough and fever, who had taught her to pare an apple and read from a hornbook and buckle her shoes into risers to keep her skirts out of the mud. She did not resent their guest a sound night's sleep or comforts that had not seen use in years.

By way of introduction, Katrina said, "I am to bring you these. And if you require any help undressing, I'm to be that as well; we've only a housemaid and a kitchen maid since Mother died, and they won't be by 'til just after sunrise."

She lay the folded clothing down and stepped aside. Back straight, chin up, face forward. Mrs. Oliver smiled at her again, and gave her thanks.

She said, "I was tied quite firmly into place this morning. Truth to tell, I had resigned myself to sleeping such."

And so Katrina went to work with buttons and lacing, while Mrs. Oliver stood still, bracing herself against the bedstead when Katrina tugged and pulled or dug her fingernails into a tricky knot.

_What did your folk use, a winch? _Katrina thought; Mrs. Oliver _laughed_, light and breathless, as if she'd _heard_ the observation.

"Did I speak aloud — ?"

"No, girl, you only caught a tickle."

Once she'd loosened the woman's clothing sufficiently for her to manage on her own, she stepped back. Her gown and stays fell to the floor before Katrina could look away, revealing the gray-pink pucker of a scar on her right shoulder. Round, larger than a shilling, poorly cleaned and poorly healed. She shut her eyes; she ought not ask, but what kind of a lady — ? — _imposed_ herself upon the hospitality of strangers in the middle of the night, and took no pains to hide — ?

... that? How did a gentlewoman acquire such a wound?

The following rustle of cloth told her it was safe to look again. Katrina helped straighten the gown for morning wear, laying it down atop the next day's shift and handing over the cap which had fallen to the ground at some point. Who went traveling by horse this close to winter with no riding habit?

A pendant on a leather cord had come to rest outside Mrs. Oliver's shift; she tucked _that _away as soon as Katrina caught sight of its design and parsed it as _strange_.

"Do you require anything else?" she asked with a yawn.

She seemed unable to look anywhere save at the cord.

Mrs. Oliver sat down upon the bed, which brought her eyes level with Katrina's own. The woman tilted her head left and held it there, like a hunting hawk.

At last, she asked, "What must you think of me, then?"

"I shall bite my tongue, ma'am, lest I give offense."

"By all means, speak freely."

The words tumbled from Katrina's lips at the command, without her permission and without her thinking them up before she said them.

"I think you _odd_. You ride unescorted during wartime. Your horse is poorly-kept, which means you're either _un_caring or ignorant of his care, or had reason to move at a pace he couldn't stand. Folk believe you where they ought to question, and question where they might be better served by — ."

She found her mouth oddly dry, her throat tight and scratchy.

"Shutting their mouths?" Mrs. Oliver supplied.

And though she felt speech might be restored if she tried it, Katrina only nodded in answer to that.

After a moment, she asked, "Who _are_ you?"

Mrs. Oliver answered at once, "An old friend of your mother's. Now, I think it's past time we both took to bed, hm?"

November 10, 1761

The next morning at dawn, the town sprung back to life from its interrupted sleep: breakfasts were cooked and served, beds tidied and tucked, the Van Tassels' cow found and locked back inside her paddock and milked. Word had spread from home to home of _interesting things come a-visiting_. As such the children twitched and fidgeted all through their schooling, until the teacher — an older fellow, squat and round with a cough from years at his pipe — gave up and pronounced that they would learn nothing in this state and sent them home.

Katrina hoisted her skirts to the calf and ran the entire way back. The search for Mr. John Oliver was well on its way when she arrived. She performed her daily tasks with a single-mindedness she had never known before, some perfunctorily but most elevating the sense of _good enough_ to art. She caught glimpses of Mrs. Oliver everywhere she turned, one moment occupying the space just within her sight and the next frustratingly gone.

During no other time of year could this have happened: November meant the harvest was long enough in and its celebration long enough past that malaise had settled down over Sleepy Hollow, and yet they had not seen first snow or the biting cold that would settle into the Hudson Valley and linger until April. Those with orchards hovered 'round their stills and casks; those tradesmen continued at their trades, but most of them were farmers and the gray time between high autumn and deep winter was, supposedly, a time of rest.

The village had grown bored, and Mrs. Oliver arrived bearing fine distraction.

Outside to give the cow her evening milking, Katrina caught sight of that self-same woman and set the bucket down with her task undone. Mrs. Oliver entered the barn and shut the door behind her; Katrina followed. They had perhaps another hour's daylight left, and those gone from house to house or who'd ridden out to the furthest farmsteads in search of Mr. Oliver would be returning any time.

She came through the back way, with its smaller door. In moments Katrina had sweated through her underclothes, the building inside warmer than it had any right to be. She discarded her shawl, hanging it on a nail just off an empty stall. Her favorite horse whickered at her when she passed; she paused and scratched beneath his chin just as he liked.

"No apples today, friend," she said, moving on.

Mrs. Oliver stood by the stall holding her own mount, who had ambled over to the side and now gave both people wary regard. The barn-cat Katrina had nursed from kittenhood perched overhead, her patchy brown-tabby-and-white coat bright in the gloomy barn.

"I rode this fellow all the way up from Virginia," Mrs. Oliver said. "It took longer than it should've done, but it couldn't be helped."

_Flimsy_.

Every word she said gave lie to the things Mrs. Oliver had told them before. And yet she _looked_ well enough, and she _behaved_ with both the expected distress of a woman whose home had nearly burned down with just enough pleasantry that everyone _believed_ her.

Katrina wanted to do the same — she craved it, but couldn't give words to why. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh, to look upon the eerie-kindness in Mrs. Oliver's eyes. She breathed.

"You are _not_ here looking for your husband, nor are you from Beacon. How did you know my mother?" Katrina asked, hoping for iron in her voice which was not there at all.

Mrs. Oliver was now holding out a palmful of dry oats to her horse, who shown bright chestnut after a good brushing. He sniffed at the grain overlong, finally accepting the offering with nimble lips.

"There's my Flint. Good horse," Mrs. Oliver said. She wiped her hand as clean as she could on the dusty hem of her skirt. After a moment, she said to Katrina, although she _addressed_ the horse, "I had your mother for a governess when I was small. She was a force of calm throughout my childhood; a good thing, too, else I'm certain I'd have torn my parents' house down around us all."

"That isn't even half your story," Katrina replied.

"No, it isn't, is it? Well, what do you think came next?"

"She would have met my father and come here."

"Mm. And the cat, have you named her?"

"Pardon?"

"Answer, please. I can smell you on her; she fairly crackles with your work."

"Lazarus."

"Subtle," Mrs. Oliver said, with no small measure of sarcasm.

Katrina bristled, and the breeze outside caused the walls to shake and the shutters to slam.

"We thought she was a tom until she she bore her first litter. What do you mean, _crackles_ with my _work_?"

Mrs. Oliver gestured at the barn around then, while the gusts calmed and the cat mewled her dissatisfaction at the disturbance. At once, Lazarus jumped down between the two people, looking from one to the other, as if she expected them to come to blows or provide some other noteworthy display.

Then she looked to Katrina and chirped once, circled her legs, and was gone.

Mrs. Oliver nodded at the silhouette formed by the departing cat, tail swishing while she turned a corner.

"Do strange things happen near you, Katrina Van Tassel? Sicknesses never seem to reach your family as long or as hard as they do everyone else? Animals happier, fires quicker to spark, injuries quicker to knit, your kitchen garden the envy of all your neighbors, for no reason you can discern? It was so for me, too.

"Maybe you indulge in a little spite; the children who tease you trip over their own feet? Perhaps you've served tea to Mrs. Van Brunt and her milk soured right there in her cup, where you knew her too outwardly polite to say a thing about it. I saw you two last night, by the way."

She stared openly at her companion, who spoke so calmly of all the things that never made any sense about her life so far.

For the whole of her recollection she'd cast aside the whispers and grumblings. _A strange child, a touched child, too bright for her own good_. First with her mother's guidance, and then in her mother's memory. She remembered her mother's hands, holding a twig like a quill pen and scratching a design in the dust, a funnel, explaining. _This is all you feel,_ she had said, letting Katrina run her fingers through the soil, the heat of summer high and wet around them.

_And this,_ her mother had touched the narrow end, _this is what you can show._

_When others overflow, it can be an embarrassment. When _we_ overflow, it can be a danger. We can _hurt_ people with it. Do you understand, my heart? _

Katrina had not, and her mother had recognized her lie for what it was and brought her to task for it, in the end extracting her promise to _try_, every day, as hard as she could.

She had been four years old. Two years and four months later Katrina herself along with nearly all of the town had taken ill; her mother had not lived, tending the sick with her own hand until she could no longer stand. No one had been left well enough and willing to minister where they had been ministered to.

"Locks pop open when I'm angry or afraid or startled," Katrina said. "Father thinks I pick them, but I don't do it on purpose, and never have. I don't know how."

Mrs. Oliver smiled, with a different quality this time: mischief, eagerness. She picked a piece of straw from Flint's forelock, and held it flat in her palm.

Slowly, she breathed three times, chest rising and falling, watching the straw the entire time. She looked a great fool, with concentration turned full upon dry grass. And then, just as slowly, the straw rose and then spun on its axis, lazily.

The shadow it cast upon her palm spun, too, matching the straw casting it.

Katrina couldn't stop staring, couldn't blink, couldn't breathe.

_Magic._

_No, witchcraft._

_What demons had she conjured for this display?_

"I — " Katrina began, but the rest of the declaration turned to lead upon her tongue.

The straw slowed, and drifted back down to Mrs. Oliver's hand; she held it up between two fingers, and out in offering, to Katrina.

"The first trick your mother taught me," Mrs. Oliver said. "There are others — here in Sleepy Hollow, she said, and spread north into Massachusetts and Connecticut. New Hampshire, where no one knows which side of the border anyone is on; Vermont, so far back in the Green Mountains they'll never be caught. You would do well if you tried."

She shook her head, slowly at first, and then with abandon — _none _of this —

Katrina was rooted to the spot, until she wasn't, and she had never run so far or fast as she did that evening, chasing the half-disc of sun on the horizon into night.

November 10-11, 1761

After three hours' time in the woods — Katrina's best guess; she'd no markers after the sun dipped and faded orange to blue to black — she had no idea where she'd got to, and no sign of road or house or stream.

"What would I give for a pillar of fire?" she asked herself, sitting down.

She put a tree at her back and a forest more of them at her front. She should have been missed hours ago, and she would be found any time, if she didn't keep moving.

A nearly full moon with a clear sky full of stars lit the night almost to the brightness of morning. She found the North Star as her father had taught her once, on a clear summer night two years past, when both of them found each other in the kitchen, sleep often elusive since her mother's death.

Cold bit at her through her clothes, without movement or sunlight to drive it back. Katrina drew her knees up to her chest and wished for any sign of life or rescue. She listened for voices, but none sounded; she listened for Mr. Van Ripper's choleric old hound's bay, but heard no snuffling nose or padding feet, no depressive howl or victorious bark of a hunting dog on the scent.

She wished for flint and steel, dry wood and — her stomach rumbled — hot bread and fresh butter. Katrina called out several times, and paused after each in case of a response. None came. By the last attempt tears streamed down her cheeks, the moon hung in exactly the same place in the sky as it had when she'd first looked up, and she could scarcely move from cold.

_The first trick your mother taught me._

No good would come if she froze to death here.

Katrina picked up a twig and lay it flat in her palm, and stared at it.

It did nothing.

_Maybe it's like a compass._

She looked upward again, found north, turned the twig in an approximation of the correct direction, and stared.

It continued doing nothing.

_Someone has to have learned how to do this the first time it happened._

Three more tries with each end pointed a different cardinal direction and her tears flowed again, for it seemed she'd spent hours here and yet no time had passed at all. Still no voices called out for her, and how _far_ had she run that she hadn't been found?

Katrina snapped the twig in two and clutched the pieces in her fist, sobbing. Her hair had come loose of its tie and now hung in a wild tangle past her shoulders, and her face felt hot and chilled at once. Somewhere far off — or perhaps nearer, she couldn't tell — an owl screeched; she flinched where she sat.

And then heat sparked in her palm.

She released the twigs to the ground, where they fell, smoldering like old coals.

Quick examination of her hand revealed no burn there, although she should have had one.

_Hurry_.

Katrina blew on the new coals until they glowed, feeding them dry leaves and dead grass, and then larger twigs and sticks, a lichen-covered branch she found nearby. The little fire flickered merrily before her, large and strong enough to leave it be for a few moments while she cleared the ground around it. No good to light the forest ablaze and burn herself to death, either.

She left it a while longer, gathering more branches by moonlight, until she had an armful of good stout ones that would burn the night through, and from there ... She'd keep the fire going and hope someone saw the smoke. And then if nobody came by morning-after-tomorrow, she'd ... leave, perhaps, go looking for a way back.

It was the best plan she had and she would see it through, Katrina decided, curling up by the fire and staring into its depths until her eyes fell closed.

Morning dawned cold and dew-wet after no time at all, and Katrina woke a shivering mess, her fire burned down to embers that went out with a thin puff of smoke when she stirred them. She listened again, without any expectation of hearing a friendly voice, and found only cold dread when she heard none. Against her best judgement, she started walking, looking for any sign of yesterday's wild tear, hoping she might rediscover her own trail and follow it back home.

After perhaps an hour's time, she found a bright-orange thread on a branch; she looked herself over immediately, and found a matching tear on the sleeve of her gown. When had that happened? How had she not noticed?

But now she had a direction, and scanned the sky above the trees for chimney smoke. _There, west of me_, she thought, making a half-turn and then moving off.

Katrina found herself whistling the closer she came, and even stopped to prise a huge fluffy cluster of hen-of-the-woods from a fallen tree. It weighed four pounds at least, and the thought of it sliced and fried in bacon fat sent a stab of hunger straight through her. She made a basket of her skirt so to damage her find as little as possible, and soon she'd come to the treeline, and a fallow field, and a path and a house.

_Why must it be the Van Brunts?_ she thought, and steeled herself for the interrogation she would surely face if she were found _here_ and _soon_.

November 11, 1761

Katrina _was_ found and she _was_ sat down at Mrs. Van Brunt's kitchen table and she was questioned and gawked at and brought very much to the center of the town's attention, while Mrs. Van Brunt herself puffed and preened about how _her boy_ had tracked Katrina down and brought her home.

Abraham, for his part, crossed his arms over his chest and looked uncomfortable throughout the entire thing. He _had_ noticed her on the edge of the field, and he _had_ called the alert — by the tenth hour of the morning he looked very much like he'd have preferred _not_ to have done this. At two-and-twenty years old, he had volunteered for service in the war and only just been sent home to heal up properly after making the poor acquaintance of a French musket ball and nearly having had his leg off. He was one of those people who could never sit still through an entire Meeting; her father had once called him full of all sorts of good talk and not half the persistence he needed to follow through on any of it.

After the fourth round of _I do not know_s, Katrina hid her face behind her fingers; out of sight of the rest of the rest of them, Abraham pantomimed dropping from a gallows. Turning her giggle into a sob was a very near thing.

The mushrooms made a ridiculous centerpiece throughout it all, and Katrina found herself wishing they'd grow _clean into the table_; she thought she saw them twitch. Then she caught her breath and held it, keeping that thought very, very still while she allowed all the feeling in her heart to drip slowly out such that she would not spill.

She could explain wandering off in search of mushrooms to have with supper; she could explain going too far and spending the night propped against a tree; she could _not_ explain those self-same mushrooms taking root in her neighbors' kitchen. Could she do such a thing, or cause its happening? She didn't trust herself one way or the other.

By noon her father arrived with Mr. Van Ripper at his heels. Both their feet were covered to the ankle with mud and both of them had thin twigs sticking out at angles in their hair. The hound howled disconsolately outside, denied his chance at finding his quarry.

"Thank the Good Lord," her father said, when he laid eyes upon her.

"Children will lose track of the time when it suits them, as I told you, Balt," Mr. Van Ripper said. "Although your girl is old enough to have better _sense_ than that."

"One would think," her father replied sourly, clutching her tightly enough that breathing became difficult. Then he drew back, took in the sight of her from top to toe, and hmphed. "Home for you, now, I think. And straight to bed."

"I am _not_ ill," Katrina replied, but she knew her father's look and she knew better than to contradict him at such a time.

He wrapped one arm around her over the walk back to their home, perhaps two miles in all. For the most of it they did not speak, and she felt each of his fingers plainly against her shoulder, as if he might never let her out of his sight again.

Several times they were stopped by one neighbor or another, whereupon her father explained what had passed and Katrina offered her own apologies for causing the stir. By the third such interruption, her cheeks glowed scarlet, for the only story she _could_ give meant admitting to a foolishness she did not posses, but the alternative...

Katrina slowed when their house came into sight, and they had turned down the packed-earth drive from Sleepy Hollow's main road. She said, "I stayed the night through in one place, once I realized — and I would have stayed today as well, but I saw the trail I'd left behind me and — "

_And she had sparked a fire without flint and steel, she had wished warmth and safety into existence, she had meddled in affairs so far beyond her, things she had no right to look at, let alone do._

She found her eyes full again, and now her father shushed her and assured her that he believed every word.

It wasn't enough.

But then she was home at last. Mrs. Oliver was there still, along with a gentleman she introduced as her husband, and then _she_ did the tending over Baltus Van Tassel's protest.

Katrina had a short moment in the corner of the kitchen, with Mrs. Oliver's back to her father and her own face blocked off from sight. She whispered, "_I went looking for mushrooms_," and Mrs. Oliver winked and nodded once.

"This whole thing has been my fault, truly," she said. "I mentioned a recipe, and your Katrina said she knew just the place to find the things we needed ..."

Mrs. Oliver's necklace was now wrapped around her wrist, the pendant held between her fingertips; both men nodded, a little dazedly, and Katrina only thought, _thin as crepe_.

After her belated breakfast and a hot drink, she was ushered off to bed, where she slept in fits throughout the afternoon. She dreamed of her mother, obscured behind a heat-haze, dressed simply in a summer gown. Her hands were gritty with rich earth from the garden, with beads of sweat upon her forehead and a smile on her mouth.

The words she said were all too quiet for human ears, and she was always just too far away for touch. _Trust,_ she seemed to say. The viney plants around her grew outward and upward, coiling around her fingers and arms, her waist, her throat, until she was not but a green blur, moving further away with each breath.

Katrina woke, suddenly bolt upright in her own bed. Mrs. Oliver sat in a chair beside her; one that belonged with the dining set and must have been brought up.

"Shh," she said, taking Katrina's hand in her own. "All's well. No harm will come — "

"I made fire. With my _hands_. Surely I've been _possessed — _"

She whispered the last word. What if someone listened at the door?

"You would _know_ if you had been. Evil in our world ... invades. If you know nothing else of it, you know the _wrongness_ it brings wherever it goes. Do you _feel_ any different from how you were three days past?"

Katrina sat back against the headboard, pulling her knees to her chest and dragging the quilt up over her body like a shield.

They were silent for a time.

She shook her head at last, barely.

Mrs. Oliver continued, "I apologize for the fright I gave you. I spent all my life wishing for a thing to set me apart, so that when your mother offered it to me ... I jumped up and seized it with both hands. She had the same affinity. I thought to impress you with a display, and that was foolish of me. You've too level a head for that."

"What _are_ we, then? What was my mother?"

"Some would call us witches," Mrs. Oliver replied. "We think of ourselves as ... sisters of the covenant. We're charged with ... with meeting evil on its own terms, and cutting it back like a weed, pulling it up before its roots can dig in too deep. We have a certain... "

"... Affinity?" Katrina repeated, with only little mirth.

Mrs. Oliver smiled. "Affinity, yes, for strange things, and I have it on good authority that ours will be _very _interesting times. We've begun to gather again, so that we shall be ready for whatever it is we've yet to face."

"Whose authority?"

"Would you believe yourself the child of a prophetess?"

_The child of a prophetess_.

Katrina tried to force recall of something, any strange thing about the mother she had known. Six years time had blunted memory, smoothed the edges into the haze of childhood. Dreams hardly counted, nor Father's stories; if he had known any of these things, he'd have been told them to her outright.

She remembered a handful of altercations, shouts echoing in the house while her mother sent her out into the woods for mulberries or down to their neighbors' with a note or a basket full of excess from their garden. Down somewhere else, away so that she wouldn't hear and wouldn't worry.

Once she had stayed, shortly before the illness which took her mother swept Sleepy Hollow, and she knew the topic was of her mother's friends, women her father did not like and of whom he did not approve. Women who on occasion did not attend Meetings. He'd called them gossips and liars, trouble and troublesome.

_I fear what this association may bring down upon our family!_

Them, too? Some had left since, others faded quietly back to the furthest borders of her reality, kept distant where they might have made themselves friends.

Katrina snapped her head quickly up from where she'd been looking at her knees, now meeting Mrs. Oliver's eyes. "I'd believe the sky were green and the grass blue after the past three days."

"Good. I would not be surprised if Sleepy Hollow acquired a new reverend in the coming months. A particular friend."

"One of us?"

"Is it 'us' now?" Mrs. Oliver asked. She took Katrina's other hand as well, holding them both tight, and Katrina did not pull away.

She shrugged. The woman nodded, her smile broadening until a radiance overtook her countenance unlike anything Katrina had ever seen.

"I have heard," Mrs. Oliver continued, "That this reverend is to be called Alfred Knapp, and that he will be amenable to providing ... " she paused for a moment, selecting her words with care, "instruction in spiritual and other matters, should you find your present schoolmaster inadequate. He'll not come looking for you, but he _will_ know you if you seek him out. This path is yours to choose, if you want it."

"I believe I may," Katrina replied.

November 13, 1761

Katrina found Mrs. Oliver's necklace tucked beneath the pitcher in her room the day after she and her husband departed, with a note bearing an address, and the words:

_Write to me. I shall be a faithful Correspondent, I assure you. I am known to my Friends as Polly, and your Letters will not fail to reach me under that Name._

_November 9, 1771_

_My dear Katrina,_

_You asked once the nature of my Injury. _

_I was born the fifth of nine Children, with all eight of them Brothers. I grew as the boys grew, for to stand aside simpering would have welcomed my own Doom, truly, though it left my mother by turn frightened, indignant, and fully determined she would turn me into a proper Gentlewoman. Your mother came here into play; it was by chance, as spoken, that we shared the Affinity we did. We did, as spoken, maintain a correspondence until her Death. I have enclosed here the letters she posted to me; perhaps mine to her are already in your possession._

_My brother Richard, next eldest from me, taught me shooting, and cursed that he had when I was better at it than him. In my twentieth year, I left home under cover of night and with my sex disguised, that I might bear arms (in the conventional way and in the manner which the Affinity mentioned indicates) for King and Country._

_This was simultaneously the Best and Stupidest decision I have made in my lifetime. Lately I was shot clean through the shoulder with a musket ball; rather than face certain Death, I came into the care of a true Gentleman, given the nursing of his fellows as Punishment. _

_It was he who discovered my sex, and upon the occasion of discovery by our Superiors, it was he who declared I had followed __him__ onto the battlefield. We were married that very day, although I remember little of this, having been overcome with the delirium of fever and the fog of what Opium could be supplied for my pain. John had wished I die free of scandal._

_He did not guess the Hardiness of our kind, thinking New Yorkers soft and weak of Constitution. _

_And so you see, John Oliver, whom you met at my departure, was in fact my husband (I thought you doubtful of this at the time), and I did in fact ride up from Virginia in one great stretch, on my way to his home in the northern portion of Massachusetts, and he with me, given leave enough to see me settled in. I diverged briefly when I learned that your family resided still in Sleepy Hollow, and he appeared some days after to ensure we would be believed. That is the story in full, and every word of it true as I remember._

_Yours Faithfully and with great Affection,_

_Polly Oliver_


End file.
